Gender and Negative Emotion During Narratives About Romantic Conflict: Links to Conflict Strategies

Adaptation to the reconstructed past is central to understanding negative emotion and its management, but research is scarce on negative emotion in romantic conflict narratives. Addressing this gap, we studied negative emotion in romantic conflict narratives as a function of gender and associations with self-reports of conflict strategies. In 145 emerging adults (54% women) from the United States, we assessed angry and sad emotion words and vocal pitch (an index of emotional arousal) during romantic conflict narratives, and self-rated anger and sadness immediately following these narratives. Results showed that self-rated anger and sadness were higher for women than men, but the use of angry and sad words and pitch did not differ by gender. For men, pitch and sad words were related to reports of less problem solving and aggression. For women, negative emotion ratings were related to less problem solving and more withdrawal. Our findings suggest that reflecting back on past romantic conflicts is a task that involves the regulation of negative emotions and that such emotions are related to conflict approaches.